I was glad to learn Winston Churchill was an even bigger fan of a marmalade
cat than I am

I blame Kathleen Hale for my ginger fixation. The moment I saw the late author’s famous creation, Orlando, rising like a purring sun across the cover of a library book, I yearned for a marmalade cat of my own. I was influenced too by Thomas O’Malley, the big red tom from The Aristocats, who duets so winningly on Everybody Wants to be a Cat.

My family had an amiable tabby mog, but she lacked the charisma of my dream ginger. It took me a good few years to achieve my ambition, but when a cat gap appeared in my marital home, I went out and procured a ginger kitten. No matter that he had a vast scab across his wild, Maine Coon face, where a bigger cat had swiped him. His silky, soft coat rippled every shade of orange, from a delicate apricot to a rich tangerine.

My husband named him Wavell, after the Second World War field marshal, and he soon proved equally intrepid. The kitten Wavell would perch on my shoulder like a parrot and, as he grew bigger, would travel in our car with his front paws firmly on the dashboard, like a nosy terrier. When the wind blew from the south west, his tail would shoot up like an orange pennant, and he’d roam for miles. I once picked him up from the other side of Cambridge on my bicycle. He sat in the basket, pleased as punch, as I cycled home. “Is that a tiger?” asked one impressed jogger.

So I was glad to learn Winston Churchill was an even bigger ginger nut than I am. The great man’s private secretary, Sir John “Jock” Colville, gave Churchill one such beast for his 88th birthday, which was promptly installed at Chartwell and named for its donor. Ginger “Jock” was such a hit that Sir Winston and his family stipulated that a doppelgänger should be sought when puss went to the great hearthrug in the sky – and thenceforth into perpetuity. This week, Jock VI, who possesses the requisite white bib and paws, just like the original, took up loafing duties at the wartime leader’s Kentish seat. Doubtless he’ll prove popular: recent research conducted by the University of California showed that ginger felines are the most popular among cat owners, because they are perceived as friendly and lovable.

The yoking of ginger to “tom” means people tend to assume all reddish cats are chaps, but this ain’t necessarily so. Churchill himself was confused on the matter. When his wife Clementine was on a cruise in the South Pacific in 1935, Churchill wrote of his ginger mog Tango: “The cat treats me well very graciously… When I dine alone, and only then, she awaits me on the table.” His daughter Mary Soames noted that “my father habitually endowed the beautiful marmalade” cat “with the feminine gender”. Particularly curious, since 75 per cent of ginger beasts are male; they only need to have the orange gene on their sole X chromosome to be born red, while females need it on both of theirs.

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I was unaware of the genetics when I bought my husband a second red Maine Coon. It was only when Capt Jack Aubrey was taken to the vet that she was revealed to be all woman. But since she sprays like a male and is every bit as indolent, we tend to refer to her as him. Without such confusion, the Coen Brothers’ new film, Inside Llewyn Davis, would lack an essential plot device; Davis spends most of the movie trying to recover a lost ginger tom. When he finally returns the animal (spoiler alert!) the owner shrieks, “Where are his testicles, Llewyn?”

But where would popular culture be without marmalade cats? Orange-striped Garfield is practically a cult, Audrey Hepburn croons to a ginger tom in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (played by Hollywood star Orangey, the only cat to win two Patsy awards), while amber-striped Jones the cat is the only being other than Ellen Ripley to survive the first Alien movie. Proof, if any more were needed, of the ginger cat’s talismanic superiority.